This very attractively produced volume covers the geology of the Southern Uplands and the adjacent Girvan–Ballantrae district in the SW of the Midland Valley. A plastic wallet inside the back cover contains a 1: 625 000 bedrock geology map of southern Scotland (including a part of the SW Highlands) and part of northern England and shows the area covered by the book in its wider context.

As noted in the foreword to the volume, the previous edition was published in 1971 and was largely prepared in the late 1960s, before the widespread impact of plate tectonic theory on so many aspects of geological thought. The influence of that conceptual revolution is no more apparent than in the vigorous debates and huge advances made in interpreting the Lower Palaeozoic rocks of southern Scotland. The region is important not only for the understanding of the geological evolution of Scotland but also that of the rest of the British Isles and eastern North America. The presentation of the volume, abundantly illustrated with colour photographs, maps, cross-sections and diagrams, also represents a quantum leap from its drier antecedents.

The book both documents the geology of the south of Scotland and seeks to explain it. Most chapters begin with a general summary of the succession, structures or igneous rocks of the time interval it covers and an outline of what they mean in terms of palaeoenvironments and geological history. In some chapters specific topics are also discussed at a fairly simple level, such as turbidity currents and their deposits in the Ordovician …